Go Big Or Go Home

Regardless of any feelings I may have on the issue substantively, from a purely political standpoint, I sort of love watching President Obama escalate wars. Remember in 2007 during the primaries when the MoveOn.org folks were shaking with pleasure over the thought of The One? Conservatives (from the anti-war contingent up through neoconservatives) can’t stand the President for their own respective reasons. Now, he’s alienating his base even further, while, for a host of other reasons, still managing to piss everyone else off. Why bring terrorists to New York City and try them in our courts with American constitutional rights while simaltaneously escalating foreign wars that you PROMISED as a candidate you’d end immediately upon being elected?

The major contradictions will end in EVERYONE disliking him – which is why, even if it’s all a bit tragic, I think it’s somewhat, in an ironic and pathetic kind of way, entertaining to watch. It’s almost like some sort of old school literary classic – you know, the kind you read in English class your senior year of high school, with the charasmatic tragic hero. The man of the hour has risen to great heights, he’s in the spotlight – but is just a bit too naive; slightly too egotistical; and while he’s valiantly attempting to balance the world on his shoulders, he, in an utmost dramatic fashion, comes crashing down; his previously unsubstantiated but rhetorically appealing status of grandeur with him.

Barack Obama might just be Icarus.

I’d say that my high school English teachers would be proud of me for that analogy – but then again, they were complicit members of the Massachusetts Teacher’s Union, so I have a hard time believing they’d appreciate it from a political perspective.

The ultimate moral of the story? Go big or go home, Mr. President. Pick your principles and stand with your base. All of this indecisive, contradictory nonsense will get you nowhere. Which leads me to the question, who is Obama’s Karl Rove? I’m sure there are many people who fit the bill; David Axelrod, Rahm Emmanuel – and hosts of others. Frankly, however, whoever’s advising him is a moron. At least Karl had the sense to tow a specific philosophical line and stick to it. Even if one disagrees with a certain intellectual approach to a situation, you can at least respect a man who has a certain set of values and stays true to them. What Obama is currently doing reveals him for what he is – an empty political hack with a few decent rhetorical tricks up his sleeve.